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New gallery of Early Egypt opens

From 14th July Room 64, admission free
The Raymond and Beverley Sackler Gallery

As part of a refurbishment of the ever popular
Ancient Egyptian galleries, the British Museum will re-open a
gallery space dedicated to Early Egypt in July. Ancient Egyptian
civilisation is the product of more than 5000 years of development.
The galley focuses on the earliest, prehistoric, phases of this
development (from 8500BC to 3100BC) down to the end of the Second
Dynasty and the beginning of the Pyramid Age, presented in the
light of advances in our understanding gained from over two decades
of intensive research. The new gallery will include the re-display
of objects long held in the collection as well as a selection of
materials only recently acquired.

Among the most exciting of the new acquisitions are the
materials from the site of Jebel Sahaba, now in northern Sudan,
which were donated to the museum by Dr Fred Wendorf in 2002.
Excavating here in the 1960s, Dr Wendorf found a cemetery dating
back to about 11,000BC, making it one of the earliest organised
burial grounds anywhere in the world. At this time life was hard,
as the Nile Valley was cold and dry, the river wild and high, and
resources were scarce. Remnants of weapons, found in the bodies of
40% of the 61 men, women and children buried here indicate that
they died of inflicted wounds, the earliest evidence for communal
violence in history. The gallery will include the display of two of
the victims and the remains of the actual weapons that killed them,
recreating the burials as they were found. This is the first time
these skeletons have been shown in public.

Other objects from Dr Wendorf’s excavationsare allowing us to
trace the beginnings of Ancient Egyptian civilization to nomadic
people who roamed in what is now the Sahara desert, after it had
been transformed into a savannah by the warmer and wetter climate
following the last Ice Age. From about 8000BC, using some of the
earliest pottery known from Africa and herding its earliest
domesticated cattle, these pastoralists lived in this precarious
environment, until gradually the climate turned dry again. Forced
to abandon the desert by 4400BC, they settled in oases and along
the river banks. There they took up farming, an innovation from the
Levant, setting in motion the social and technological developments
that led directly to advent of Dynastic Egyptian civilization at
about 3100BC.

The gallery will explore the accelerated cultural developments
in the 5th and 4th millennium BC following the emergence of settled
farming communities. These include the creation of a series of
female figurines that are amongst the oldest known Egyptian
sculptures of the human form. Boldly carved from hippopotamus ivory
or elegantly modelled from clay they were made by Badarian farmers
at about 4200BC. It will also examine the distinctive cultures in
northern and southern Egypt, religious concepts and practices, the
introduction of specialized crafts and the establishment of
international trade relations.

Another key feature of the gallery will be the display of
Gebelein Man, the best preserved example of natural mummification
dating to around 3500BC. A virtual autopsy table, a
state-of-the-art interactive tool based on medical visualisation
will let visitors explore this natural mummy for themselves and
learn how we have been able to discover his age and determine the
surprising way that he died. Using the interactive touchscreen and
the gesture based interface developed by the Interactive Institute
and Visualization Center C in Sweden, it is possible to strip away
the skin to expose his skeleton, and make virtual slices to view
his internal organs and his brain, still present in the skull,
organs that were often removed when the ancient Egyptians began to
artificially mummify bodies.

The process of unifying Egypt under one king began near the end
of the prehistoric, or ‘predynastic’ period, about 3300BC and
culminated 200 years later in the First Dynasty. Actual events are
unknown, but the early rulers (including Egypt’s first king Narmer)
recorded their victories on beautifully carved temple objects. They
saw themselves fighting these battles on behalf of the gods, to
protect the world from chaos. Two of the most important of these
temple objects will be redisplayed in the gallery: the Hunters
Palette, the earliest of the elaborately carved temple palettes,
and also the first to show the beginning of the very specific way
the ancient Egyptians depicted the human form, and the Battlefield
Palette, which will be reunited with its joining piece on long-term
loan from the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. The early origins of
writing and the technological developments during the first
dynasties that made the age of the pyramids possible are some of
the other themes which will be explored.

Graham Stirk, lead architect and Senior Partner, Rogers Stirk
Harbour + Partners, said: “The need for versatility, as well as
sensitivity to the historical context, underpinned our thinking
throughout the design process of the World Conservation and
Exhibitions Centre. We are very proud of the building, which offers
a flexible series of spaces that support the wide range of
activities currently undertaken by the British Museum and can adapt
to changing requirements over time.”

The hieroglyphic script is a distinctive aspect of ancient
Egyptian culture, but its origins are controversial. Once thought
to have been borrowed from Mesopotamia, Egyptian writing is now
understood as an independent invention. Small labels dating to 3250
BC, found in Abydos (in southern, Upper, Egypt) Tomb U-j, provide
the evidence. Most show symbols, but some bear hieroglyphic signs
denoting sound values that write place names. These hieroglyphs are
unlike anything known earlier, suggesting that writing was a
deliberate creation by early rulers to control a growing
bureaucracy. Labels like those found in Abydos, and possibly
originating from that tomb, will be displayed.

Unification brought rapid advances and prosperity. First Dynasty
kings were buried at Abydos, with everything needed to make their
huge tombs luxurious palaces for eternity – food, dishes,
furniture, jewellery, tools, weapons and even board games (the
gaming table and playing pieces for mehen, the ‘snake game’ will be
on display).

When a First Dynasty king died he took with him not only all the
luxuries needed for a palace in the afterlife, but also the people
to run it. Wives, officials, bodyguards, and servants were interred
around his tomb and funerary temple. The fact that most were
adolescents or young adults show their deaths were not natural.
Reaffirming the king’s power for eternity, their sacrifice also
guaranteed the retainers privileged positions in the afterlife. One
of the sacrifice courtiers was a person called Nefer, meaning
‘beautiful’, who was one of a dozen people with dwarfism buried
amongst the retainers surrounding the tombs of First Dynasty kings.
From his depiction, we can tell he had a genetic condition called
achondroplasia. In Ancient Egypt this was not considered a
disability, but a mark of divine favour. Such individuals were
valued members of the royal court, they were also among the select
few to have limestone stelae placed on the low mounds covering
their graves. Nefer’s limestone stelae will be on display in the
gallery.

The new Early Egypt gallery covers over 5000 years of dynamic
experimentation during which many of the characteristics that came
to typify ancient Egyptian civilization were first developed.
Through the display the visitor will gain a better understanding of
how and why this occurred and the debt that the Egyptians of later
times owed to their early ancestors.

Notes to Editors

The special exhibition Ancient lives: new discoveries runs until
30 November 2014. The exhibition sponsored by Julius Baer with
support from technology partner Samsung and uses state-of-the-art
technology to allow visitors to virtually explore inside mummy
cases and examine the bodies underneath the wrappings, bringing us
face to face with eight people who lived in the Nile Valley
thousands of years ago.